Heavy Downpour Renders Awka Residents Homeless

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Flood resulting from a heavy downpour has submerged part of Nwakpadolu Estate, Agu-Awka area of the capital city of Anambra.
Properties worth millions of naira including houses, properties, electricity transformer and farms were under water, while the families hugely affected moved to their neighbors? apartments with their belongings.

Flood Sacks

As at Friday morning when newsmen visited the estate, residents were still scooping water out of their apartments, while properties were being exposed to air and sun for drying. Narrating the ordeal of the residents of the area, Dr Eugene Alagbu, chairman of the estate residents? Association told newsmen that it had been the plight of the people of the area every rainy season. Alagbu, a Senior Lecturer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, said the floods not only threatened the life and property of the residents but created stagnant water bodies which constituted a breeding ground for deadly insects and reptiles and feared that children may drown when adults area away. He said the flooding was caused by the construction of a culvert around the area which blocked natural floodplain that led to a neighboring stream, pointing out that the blockade had increased the threat of flooding.
?As you can see, we are seriously endangered by flooding, those the water has receded, all these area including this transformer was submerged due to the rains and this has been our experience each time? it pours?, he said.??Another resident Mr Sam Ezeafurukwe, attributed the incessant flooding to the abandonment of a less than one kilometre road project leading to the area.
Ezeafurukwe called on the Anambra government to construct a bridge over the flood plain to allow for free flow of flood and complete the access road which he said had been abandoned for over 10 years. Chief Joseph Nwakpadolu, who lamented the extent of damage caused by the flood said he had written the state government repeatedly but regretted that nothing had been done check the erosion menace in the area. Nwakpadolu also said that officials of government had come to see the state of affairs at the site but none had come back to effect any control. He urged the government to save both the landlords and tenants of the estate from further damage and possible outbreak of epidemic.
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